Juliet

Her body cloaked in tear soaked satin
Is covered by the shadows of his hands.
Her lovesick eyes swollen,
Unable to recognize the girl in the mirror.

She sleeps with a Harlequin paperback under her pillow
And two locks on every window.
She keeps old photographs and love letters
In a shoebox underneath her bed.

By midnight she's naked before me,
The red light draped on her breasts.
My hand down her thong with a sweaty dollar bill.
The city bus her carriage home,
To an empty apartment
With his things still on the walls.

She cries to David Bowie,
With Chinese opera in her head
And Byron on her bookshelf.
Love's purgatory can be more savage
Than a man's uninvited tongue
Hot against her hidden flesh.

In a bathtub surrounded by jasmine candles,
The summer air thick like bourbon.
She washes and she cleans
But the memories remain.